This week I’ve felt stretched thin—waking up earlier and heading to bed later than I’d like. One moment, I’m reviewing students’ midterm portfolios. The next, I’m scripting a hard conversation. While attending to microaggressions and facilitating tricky online and in-person conversations, I’m also sharing hopeful-yet-emotional announcements with family, friends, colleagues, and students. In the midst of such frenzied and frenetic activity, I’ve been finding support ... Read more ...
Contemplative Practices
These posts share a range of contemplative practices, including guided meditation, reflective writing, and everyday divination. Practices can be used for healing, visioning, mindfulness, and more.
My Journey with Back Pain
Back pain. It’s a friend who’s accompanied me through most of my life, beginning in my early teens and really intensifying during graduate school when I had an “emergency surgery” after losing muscular control of my right foot. In 2006, when I had this surgery, I experienced intense pain: burning sensations that radiated from my low back down my right leg and into the toes that I couldn’t lift. It was a scary experience. The last decade has taken me on an unexpected ... Read more ...
Spell-Casting and Other Contemplative Practices for Reflection and Recovery
In the past two weeks, I’ve been listening to a LOT of guided meditations, as a concussion has me grounded. I’m grounded in the sense of a child who’s misbehaved: sent to my room, with limited activities, and in reflection on what’s gotten me here. And I’m grounded in the sense of rooting down and deep, strengthening the base/foundation from which I can grow. Truly, I’m grateful for “the grounding,” and I’m grateful for the contemplative practices that are helping me ... Read more ...
Caterpillars and the Butterfly Effect: Noticing Small Signs and Taking Small Actions
2018. New Year’s Day. I am with family in Florida and noticing many interesting insects, including these caterpillars and moths: Curiosity leads us to watch, take photographs, and later look up the species, learning that these are oleander caterpillars transformed into oleander moths. I keep seeing caterpillars and moths, so I begin researching their symbolic significance. Suddenly I realize this is another example of everyday divination and miraculous timing, as ... Read more ...
Expect Miracles
Of the many lessons I’m still learning, an important one is to trust life as it unfolds. I struggle with trust because I struggle with letting go of perfectionism and perceived control. Despite these struggles, whenever I soften attachments to my preferred timing and open instead to possibilities, miracles occur. And the more I open to miracles, the more I find HOPE, which is so greatly needed on the long haul toward justice. Recently, I’ve had an important reminder ... Read more ...
A Few of My Favorite Things
December. It’s a hard time for folks walking on wires to please others. It’s a hard time for folks finishing semesters when running on fumes. It’s a hard time for folks grieving family hurts or losses. It’s a hard time for processing what comes up in contemplative moments and social interactions alike. This December is especially hard because it punctuates a year of great injustice, dehumanization, and the increasing visibility of wrongdoings. Now, as so many of us ... Read more ...
Breaking Commitments and Recommitting through Mindful Reflection
A little more than a year ago, I wrote the following statement to describe this blog project: “Embodied knowledge matters. So do commitments. And especially acting on commitments as part of everyday life, BIG and small. This blog shares ongoing efforts of feeling, thinking, and doing for justice. Posts include reflections, recipes, research, and resources: all seek to make sense of what it means to live a life for justice.” This language signals that, at best, ... Read more ...
Listening for/to the “Strong YES”
In the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about when and how I tune into my “strong YES” for decision-making. I find that I’m truer to myself when I’m following Marty Tribble’s guidance: “The absence of a strong YES is actually a no." Reflecting on this advice is what led me to write “Using Your ‘Strong Yes’ to Guide Career Decisions” for Inside Higher Ed: I hope that this article helps others tap into the strong YES not only for navigating job searches and ... Read more ...
40 Days of Yoga Nidra
A year ago, when launching this blog, I wrote about welcoming winter by looking within—resolving “to tune into how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, and what I can do,” resolving “to be true to my truths, my commitments, and my joys.” These resolutions have accompanied me through the year and are now re-energizing the desire for introspective hibernation. As luck (or divine intervention) would have it, Marty Tribble (my Reiki teacher) is offering a community practice of ... Read more ...
Everyday Divination
For Halloween, I dressed as Professor Sybill Trelawney, a professor of divination at Hogwarts (within the world of Harry Potter). This has been a favorite costume of mine in past years, because I like to fashion myself the absent-minded professor. This year I’m thinking about how I’m drawn to Trelawney because she fits the archetype of the dreamer, seer, and intuitive. Why Study and Embrace Archetypes? Archetypes are helpful for seeing qualities and narratives that ... Read more ...
